Twilight in Mariposa Grove

Twilight in Mariposa Grove

By Alfred Lambourne

There was no mistaking them. So lofty their stature, so great their girth, these were surely the culmination of our quest. One by one we passed them by, these hoary chronicles of de- parted time. Whichever way we turned, our eyes were greeted with a sight of one or more of this concourse of giants. We gazed in astonishment, for the effect was superb. When we were at such points in the grove as brought a number of the vast trees into our view, then it was, indeed, like standing in the nave of some majestic cathedral. The ground on which the trees stand rises and falls in broken hillocks, and one of the finest scenes in the grove was first to meet our gaze. This was where a murmur- ing stream comes down a shallow glen, and two of the mighty ones mingle their foliage above it, the waters of the stream keep- ing eternally green the moss and ferns at their feet. Men of science, statesmen, warriors, heroes of Indian lore, have furnished names for the more important trees and they, in return for the loan, in many cases, have rescued, for a few more years at least, the memory of those whose deeds are beginning to fade already into the mists of oblivion. And among these trees, a remnant of his tribe, wanders the decrepit and bewildered Mariposa. The Big Trees belong to the species known as the Sequoia gigantea. In the way of comparison there is nothing else so like these tree-trunks in shape and size as a lighthouse like Bell Rock or the Eddystone. But this is a backhanded comparison, for we know that it was a tree-trunk that suggested the form of the last named building. The bark has a red, burnt-sienna tinge, and, in many instances, the yellow Spanish moss so prevalent in the Sierra Nevada covers a large portion of their trunks and limbs. The Indians formerly built their camp-fire at the base of the trees and to this habit is due the death of many a stal- wart one. Pluto's Chimney is a tree whose core was burned out centuries ago. Dry rot is working against the trees, too. They moulder away first at their hearts. The fallen Father of the Forest is an example of this. Not wishing to go into detail con- cerning the heights and circumferences of the Big Trees, I will mention only the dimensions of two of the largest in the grove. The Grizzly Giant is ninety-nine feet in girth, and over three

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hundred feet in height; after him comes Wawona, through which an opening has been cut to allow the stage-coach to pass through it. This one is smaller in girth, but only a few feet less in height. With but slight decrease in measurements one might go on, giving name after name, until the list was swelled al- most to a hundred. The bark on many of these trees attains a thickness of eighteen inches, although their cones are a- mong the very smallest in the Redwood family. Two that lie upon my table I find to be less than three inches in length. When the first feeling of astonishment at their enor- mous sizehas passed away ,and we begin calmly to realize how venerable these trees are, how many years have gone to their building, then it is that we begin to appreciate the sight. There they stood, those mighty trees, when He-

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rodotus "visited all the chief places of Greece and Asia Minor, traveled in Thrace and Scythia, explor- ed Egypt, went to Tyre, and through Phoeni- cia and Pales- tine, and made his way into Babylon." Since their green fronds first peeped above the ground what changes have come to man- kind! Old faiths have died and new ones taken their place. The worship of Apis has ceased; the ibis and croco- diles of the Nile are no longer sacred. The gods of Olym- pus have been dethroned Vc- ;

nus,Pallas,Mars, even Jove him- self, have faded before a new dis- pensation. Jesus of Nazareth, born in a man- ger, brought to the world tidings of peace and

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great joy. Since the growth of these outer rings of wood, Mahomet lived his strange life of visions, toil and blood, to mould the faith of millions. For full five hundred years some of them had stood when Aristotle wrote all that was known in his time of the British Isles: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules are two islands, which are very large. Albine and Irene, called the Britannic." Almost as now they are they were when King Arthur founded his Round Table; while Venice, Daughter of the Sea, rose from the rush-covered islands of the Adriatic, while she grew strong to crush the power of the Turks at Lepanto, and afterwards spread the sails of her argosies on every sea. Thus they stood whilst Florence lived through her short reign of power and glory; and as the Moors built the fairy towers of the Alhambra, that now for five hundred years has stood desolate on the Hill of Darro. Since they have grown old, the noblest achievements of our race have been done. There they have lived whilst war, superstition, ambition, dreams of liberty, have swayed the hearts of men, and better civiliza- tions have evolved from the decay of ancient states and empires. As the sun stoops low in the west and the evening dusk steals through the grove, we grow strangely quiet; we do not care to talk to, or ask questions of our guide; do not care to know the name of this tree or that, but would rather listen to the whispering voices in the tree-tops far above, and watch the deepening of the red beams of twilight. The solemn pres- ence of these last of a race is exerting its power over us. How brief the sum of days allotted to human life! How like a meteor in the night, that glows and is gone, is man's troubled existence! Here, when we see these long-living products of na- ture's fertility lie mouldering and dead, yielding at last to the inevitable law of decay, how forcibly we are made to feel the truth of Lord Bacon's couplet:

"Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns in water, or but writes in dust."